Like Russia, Mexico had long suffered the woes of internal dissension and embarrassment of foreign hostility invited by her weakness. Throwing off the yoke of Spain, when that power began to decline in the early part of the nineteenth century, a long series of republics and dictatorships with various constitutions had succeeded each other.
Plundered by military self-seekers, repressed by the domination of monks, despoiled of her territory at the behest of the slave power of the United States, at the close of the war of 1846-48, and finally a prey to the cupidity of Napoleon III, ending in the tragic death of the ill-fated Maximilian at Queretaro, in 1877, rescued from foreign power by the firmness and courage of Grant and Sheridan, Mexico fell to Diaz, a land of brigands, without credit abroad of confidence at home.
In our own time we have seen the result. Credit has been established, a standing army for the national safeguard maintained, education fostered, industry encouraged, revolution suppressed, protection to life and property assured, and confidence restored at home and abroad by the natural growth which has come from continued peace and the conservation of inherent resources. So Russia enjoyed a period of recuperation under Michael Romanoff.
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From General Nelson A. Miles
Thrilling Stories of The Russian-Japanese War, 1904
